One
of the clips that Oliver used in this video was a news clip from the
BBC that was taken in 2000. At the time, it was discovered that some
of Gap's clothes were manufactured in a sweatshop in Cambodia, which
employed underage children. Specifically, the video shows two young
girls who were twelve and fourteen years old at the time. They had
lied about their age to work at the sweatshop factory.

Gap
announced its plans to enhance its age verification requirements
after the BBC aired that discovery. Oliver gives them a backhanded
compliment but then the video moves on to show how despite those
promises, Gap and other retailers are still continuing to employ
child labor throughout the world.

Well,
so fucking what?

It's
incredibly easy to get on a high horse and start moralizing. Any
idiot can do that. And many idiots do. But what Oliver fails to do,
yet again, is to ask the more pertinent questions. Case in point, why
would a twelve-year-old Cambodian girl lie about her age to work in a
sweatshop? Could it be that working at a
Gap-owned sweatshop is preferable to the alternative?

In
a country that is as poor as Cambodia (the country's GDP per capita
is a
little over US$1000), childhood, which is very much taken for
granted in affluent societies, is a luxury that very few can afford.
So, Cambodian children have to work.

If
they can't work at Gap-owned or any other clothing apparel-owned
sweatshop, a practice that Oliver seems to want to see ended, Cambodian children
do have other alternative types of employment to choose from.

For
instance, another alternative source of employment that Cambodian
children can look forward to is prostitution (see here,
here,
and here). Of course, prostitution is not the only kind of employment they can pursue.
There is also begging (see here,
here,
and here).

If sweatshop work is actually put to an end, might that
inadvertently condemn those workers, children and adults, to even
worse conditions? Maybe it's possible that working at sweatshops is not the
worst thing that could happen to children who live in countries like Cambodia?But
who has time to ask such questions? There are social justice warriors
who want to watch faux-intellectual comedy shows and feel smug about their sense of
self-righteousness!

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Seeing
how today is Earth Day, it wouldn't be appropriate for me to pass
this day without mentioning it. What I want to focus on is what many
environmentalists call “sustainability,” and explain why it is
quite an odd concept.The word“sustainability” has been part of our zeitgeist for so long that many people from environmentalists to economists bandy about the word without ever seeming to clearly define it first.

So,
we must first define “sustainability.” Especially when it comes to political rhetoric, words can oftentimes mean something that is different from
what the words mean in everyday speech. Therefore, in order to get a
proper definition of sustainability, I thought that it would be best
to get the definition from Greenpeace itself.

However,
when I went to Greenpeace's website, I learned that there is no fixed
definition that everyone can agree with. For instance, this one writer thinks that sustainability means:

That
sounds like it would be difficult to argue against. However, there is
a problem with that logic. The logic only makes sense if we know for
certain that the things we do today will be the same things that
future generations will be doing in the indefinite future.

A
good example that shows that we cannot know for certain how the
future will unfurl is the Great
Horse Manure Crisis of 1894.
In the nineteenth century, cities such as London and New York City
were home to tens of thousands of hansom
cabs.
All those horses, of course, produced massive amounts of manure and
urine, which attracted flies, which in turned caused further problems
such as the spread of typhoid fever.

That
year, The Times newspaper predicted:

“In
fifty years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of
manure.”

Obviously,
that prediction never came to pass due to the invention of the
automobile (not to mention Henry Ford's ability to mass produce
them).

Had
the governments of the world at the time heeded the environmentalists' dire predictions, and adopted sustainability as an important goal of
environmental protection, such a program might have included the
preservation of grazing land for all those horses into the indefinite
future and the creation of jobs that involve manure
removal. In other words, the government would have prepared for a
future that was never going to come.

So
we have to ask ourselves this important question. Are we today so
much wiser than our ancestors that, unlike them, this time, we know
for a fact that what we are doing today will still be done in the
indefinite future? We have not yet even seen the full potential of Bitcoins and 3-D printing!

Today,
the concerns of environmentalists is not drowning in horse manure,
but rather from the melting polar ice caps due to the increase in the
amount of man-made carbon gases.

Also,
there is a team of young scientists here in Korea who are currently
developing a new plasma technology that could potentially
convert carbon dioxide and methane into hydrogen and carbon monoxide,
which could then be sold at a hefty profit. Assuming that this
technology pans out, and combine that with continuously declining
costs of solar energy, it becomes conceivable that worrying about
carbon emissions might become a thing of the past.

Of
course, this is not to suggest that people ought to pollute like as
though there will be no tomorrow. After all, breathing in clean air is
much more pleasant than breathing in air that has been saturated with
coal ash.However,
the rush to cut oil consumption or coal consumption, finite sources of energy, in order
to ensure that the needs of the present generation are met without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs, might be an unwarranted act of
fear.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

This is not the first time I am writing about a video segment that was aired on this show. I have written about the show's segment on Ayn Rand before. That post can be seen here.The video was full of humor and compassion. But just as the previous video about Ayn Rand was based on puddle-depth knowledge about Rand or Objectivism, this video is based on economic ignorance.Oliver does not come out and say that they ought to be regulated. He simply points out how payday loan companies use various legal loopholes to avoid regulations. One of the regulations that he mentions, which failed, is the interest cap that was imposed on payday loan companies by the Illinois state government.Never mind that price controls have been attempted many times throughout history much to everyone's pain and suffering (see here, here, here, and here).Lately, I've been reading a lot of Thomas Sowell's articles. Sowell is not a libertarian or an Objectivist. He is certainly an old-school conservative. Therefore, I do not agree with everything that Sowell says. However, when it comes to economics, the man is as sharp as a razor blade.The following are some of the highlights of Sowell's views on the media's witch hunt against payday loans. The original article was published in The Washington Times and the entire post can be found here.

Yet there is remarkably little concern on the political left as to the actual consequences of the laws and policies they advocate. Once they have taken a stance on the side of the angels against the forces of evil, that is the end of the story, as far as they are concerned.

The interest rates charged on such unsecured loans to people with low credit scores are usually higher than on loans to people whose higher incomes and better credit histories make them less of a risk.

Because those who take unsecured short-term loans are usually poor and often ill-educated, the political left can cast the high interest rates as unconscionably taking advantage of vulnerable people. However, similar economic principles apply to more upscale, short-term lending to well-educated people who have valuable possessions to use as collateral.

Editorial demagoguery against “predatory” lending might well be called predatory journalism — taking advantage of other people’s ignorance of economics to score ideological points and promote still more expansion of government powers that limit the options of poor people especially, who have few options already.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Back
in July 2012, when President Obama was running for reelection,
he gave a speech that encapsulated everything that I despised about
him. Today, that speech is known as the “You
Didn't Build That” speech. The portion of the speech that got
so many people's attention reads as follows:

“There
are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me –
because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t –
look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your
own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by
people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There
are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked
harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something – there are a
whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

“If
you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.
There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to
create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed
you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve
got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that
happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government
research created the Internet so that all the companies could make
money off the Internet.

“The
point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our
individual initiative, but also because we do things together.”

“There
is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You
built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you
moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you
hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your
factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us
paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come
and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect
against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

“Now
look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a
great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the
underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward
for the next kid who comes along.”

There
has been an ungodly amount of political
commentary that was made about these two speeches – both for and
against. However, I discovered the most impassioned, intelligent, and
cogent criticism
of this particularly mendacious view yesterday at Cafe Hayek
(cafehayek.com). It was written by Donald
Boudreaux
who is an economics professor atGeorge
Mason University.

So,
I have decided to share Professor Boudreaux's post in full here:

You
Didn't Make Sense With That

By
Donald Boudreaux, April
12th 2015

I’m
sick of hearing the “you didn’t build that” mantra trumpeted
whenever someone feels the need to flaunt his or her faux
sophistication about the way the world works.

Yes,
it’s true that entrepreneurs and investors who profit in the
marketplace typically don’t build much of the infrastructure they
use to connect with their input suppliers and with their customers.
But this fact proves far less than those who shout it out think it
proves.

First,
and least importantly, the fact that government in practice supplies
X amount and Y kinds of infrastructure does not necessarily mean that
that infrastructure would not have been provided – and provided
better – by the private sector had government not entered that
arena.

Second,
no serious proponent of free markets has ever denied the reality that
government supplies a great deal of useful infrastructure. Nor has
any serious proponent of free markets denied that the use of
infrastructure built by others, government or not, is beneficial to
all of those who use it productively.

Third,
and relatedly, all serious proponents of free markets understand that
every person in a free market today, every minute of every day of
every year of his or her life, depends upon the productive efforts of
hundreds of millions of people. The fact that some of the hundreds
of millions of people upon whom each of us depends are government
employees, or are set to their tasks by politicians, does not make
those particular workers or those particular tasks any more important
to each individual’s success in markets than are the tasks that are
performed by the private sector. A government-built road might have
contributed to Smith’s success, but so, too, did the privately
produced truck that he uses to serve his customers. Likewise with
the privately produced fuel for that truck and the privately produced
and manned filling stations* where that fuel is pumped into the
truck. So, too, for the food that Smith eats to stay alive and
alert, the privately designed and manufactured clothing that he
wears, and the privately supplied financing that tides his business
over during a slump and privately supplied insurance that makes his
business risks more bearable.

Fourth
– and following closely from point number three – those who
scream “You didn’t build that!” are oblivious to the importance
of the margin. The government-built road that Smith uses to earn
handsome profits by serving consumers might well be absolutely
essential to Smith’s success, but this fact doesn’t mean that the
road’s contribution at the margin to Smith’s success is
significant. Smith’s profits depend upon what he adds to the
road’s services – how Smith himself uses the road to create value
for consumers. If Smith uses the road to ship truckloads full of
ordinary toothpicks to market, he might earn just enough to continue
in that line of work, but he’ll not earn magnificent profits. If
instead Smith uses the road to ship truckloads full of new’n'improved
toothpicks – toothpicks that sell at prices only slightly above
that of ordinary toothpicks but, in addition to doing what ordinary
toothpicks do, also are guaranteed to prevent gum disease, cavities,
bad breath, insomnia, and erectile dysfunction – then Smith profits
magnificently. Smith’s “above normal” profits (as economists
call them) have nothing to do with the road (or with, say, the
private efforts of entrepreneurs who are responsible for the delivery
truck Smith uses) and everything to do with Smith’s own innovative
efforts.

Fifth,
government-supplied infrastructure doesn’t guarantee
entrepreneurial success – a reality that is not as trite as it
might seem in this context. If government-supplied infrastructure
did guarantee entrepreneurial success, then everyone with access to
that infrastructure would be a successful entrepreneur. Precisely
because government-supplied infrastructure is supplied widely, and
typical free of any marginal cost to users, the very fact that only
some of the people who use it do so entrepreneurially – and, of
this number, only a fraction do so successfully – means that
successful entrepreneurs contribute at the margin things creative and
unique above and beyond the value of whatever inputs, including
portions of the infrastructure, that are used to make these creative
and unique contributions. Entrepreneurs’ profits come from, and
reflect, the value that they add.

It’s
true that, because the various pieces of infrastructure (and the
inputs used to produce and maintain them) are scarce, infrastructure
has a cost. Everyone who uses it should pay his or her appropriate
share of this cost – but the amounts due to government as payment
are not some open-ended claim on successful entrepreneurs.

Again,
the fact that only a relatively small handful of entrepreneurs
succeed at the level of achieving a net worth of (say) $10 million or
above means that such success is not at all easy and that such
success is not remotely guaranteed or even made likely by
government’s provision of infrastructure. The marginal
contributions of successful entrepreneurs depend far more upon their
own contributions. The reality that infrastructure in developed
countries is supplied widely (and, again, is often available to users
at zero marginal cost) is evidence – when set beside the other fact
that relatively few individuals today earn as entrepreneurs even as
little as hundreds of thousands of dollars of net personal wealth –
that market entrepreneurship is far more scarce than is
infrastructure. So to discourage market entrepreneurship with higher
taxes and more government-dictated regulation is insane.

Finally,
sixth: If market entrepreneurs didn’t build the infrastructure they
use to earn profits, nor did consumers and salary and wage workers
build the infrastructure they use to get to shopping malls,
supermarkets, vacation destinations, and their places of work. Yet
those who benefit the most from competitive, innovative markets are
the masses. If government’s provision of infrastructure justifies
politicians and professors pointing accusing fingers at people who
benefit from government-supplied infrastructure and accusing those
people of not paying their ‘fair’ share for it, then pointing
fingers only at successful entrepreneurs makes no sense.There’s
more to say, but this post is already too long.

Much
can be said about his books, and I plan to do so in the future. For
now, however, I will focus only on his defense of the
infant industry argument, which is an idea that argues that
emerging businesses and industries require government protection –
in the form of tariffs, subsidies, and quotas – from their more
entrenched competitors, particularly foreign competitors.

In
that article that I linked earlier from The Independent,
Professor Chang compares nascent industries to his six-year-old
child. If this weren't a cringe-worthy moment of stupidity and/or
academic dishonesty, I don't know what is.

Moving
on, in Bad Samaritans, Professor Chang makes the argument that
Korea's economy did not develop because of neo-liberal economic
policies, but rather due to heavy government involvement in the
economy. There is no question that that is true.

There
is also no question that Korea's rapid economic growth was nothing short
of miraculous. There is a reason that it is often referred to as the
Miracle on the Han River. But is that proof that protectionism
was what allowed Korea's economy to develop so quickly? Well, that's
quite hard to confirm considering the fact that Singapore
and Hong
Kong, which practised freer trade policies, went through much
quicker and greater economic development.

“But
they are city-states; they cannot be compared to a country that is so
much bigger like Korea,” I often hear people say.

Fine,
fair enough. Then one has to wonder about China and India. Both
countries are much
bigger than Korea and their economies grew much more quickly after
they began to liberalize their respective economies (see here
and here).

Of
course, this is certainly not to say that government controls and
economic programs are non-existent in Hong Kong or Singapore or China
or India. They are not
free market economies. But they have shown that freer
markets do lead to greater growth.

Another
point that Professor Chang does not mention is that subsidization and
other forms of government protections do not guarantee economic
survival or development in any way, stretch, or form.

Yes,
Korea is an example of an economic success story. However, we also
have to look at other examples where protecting infant industries
were not successful. For example, African
cotton farmers want their governments to end the subsidies programs for their respective national industries so that they can finally compete in the international market; and which African country's economic development could ever compare with
Korea's economic growth?

The
problems of protecting infant industries are not limited to African
countries. In the United States, despite the government's efforts to
prop up Solyndra,
a company that specialized in manufacturing solar cells, with up to
US$535 million of taxpayers' money, the
company still declared bankruptcy.

Similar
examples can be found in Korea, too. Samsung was certainly one of the
chaebol conglomerates that the Korean government helped to protect
and nurture. However, Samsung is not the only business that got so
much love from the government. Another industry that has gotten a
lot of love from the Korean government is the rice industry. So
why has Samsung become an internationally well-known name but there
isn't a single Korean food-producing company that is as well-known
outside of Korea?

In
other words, no amount of subsidies or trade protections ever seems to
be able to prevent what was always doomed to fail from failing.

So
what does Korea owe its economic success to? That is a difficult question to answer; much more difficult than Professor Chang would like for his readers to believe. It's certainly not free market
economics. As Professor Chang has shown, the Korean government
has been heavily involved in Korea's economy. But as I have shown,
freer markets like Hong Kong and Singapore have grown more quickly
than Korea and subsidies do not guarantee success.

Though
that specific question may be harder to answer, what is much easier
to answer is that Korea's economy did not develop because
of
the government's protections, subsidies, and overall involvement in
the economy, but rather in
spite of them.

Friday, April 10, 2015

One of the most unfortunate things about modern day politics is that there is no shortage of cheap moralizing, which often has the tendency to allow people to fall into the “us vs. them” mentality.

For
example, when people say that they want to push
for free lunches for all school children, or greater
welfare programs for the poor, what they are doing is essentially
positioning themselves into different camps. However, it is not as simple as merely declaring one's position. That is because this “us vs. them” mentality also allows people to place themselves on the side of caring and compassionate
people, while (consciously or unconsciously) castigating those who
disagree with them as uncaring monsters.The fact is that cheap moralizing allows people to make a moral claim without having to go into too
many details. And what a wonderful political tool it is! It allows
people to feel good about themselves when they, for example, claim to support
greater welfare without having to show much in the way of evidence in
regards to its
moral shortcomings or success (or the
lack thereof) ratios.

Once
people have convinced themselves of the “goodness” of a
particular cause, it is very hard to get them to see
reason. For instance, when South Gyeongsang Governor
Hong Jun-pyo announced that free
lunches would no longer be provided for all students, but only
for those from poor families that qualified for the program, Governor
Hong's opponents predictably went
on the offensive. While they heralded themselves as angels who
were trying to achieve the utopian dream of economic justice for all, they
castigatedGovernor Hong and his supportersas monsters who abandoned the people.

It
is no wonder that so many politicians love to engage in cheap moralizing. It is the easiest way to whip up support and votes.

However,
there is another reason why this is so dangerous. As Milton Friedman once said:

“Nothing
is so permanent as a temporary government program.”

To
explain, once something has been whipped up to be “good,” and once
enough people have bought into that idea, it becomes nearly impossible to
reverse it. It's the main reason why so many people oppose Governor
Hong's plan to scale back the “free” lunch program.

After
all, if people agree to reverse “good” policies, it would
mean that those who once supported those “good” policies would, by
definition, have to admit that they are now “evil.”

Perhaps
it is time that people put away their religiously guarded morals, and reflect on that thought just a bit, and wonder just how reasonable it is to claim that the opposition is simply evil.

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Today's quote comes from the great economist Thomas Sowell about the minimum wage. The following quote was taken from his book Basic Economics (Chapter 10: Minimum Wage Laws).

Minimum wage laws make it illegal to pay less than the government-specified price for labor. By the simplest and most basic economics, a price artificially raised tends to cause more to be supplied and less to be demanded than when prices are left to be determined by supply and demand in a free market. The result is a surplus, whether the price that is set artificially high is that of farm produce or labor.

Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount — and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed. Yet minimum wage laws are almost always discussed politically in terms of the benefits they confer on workers receiving those wages. Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they either lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force.

For
those of you keeping score at home, I, too, wrote about the ever
increasing costs of higher education here.

EconStories,
which produces and uploads videos about economics on its Youtube
channel, has been uploading a series of fun videos called EconPop.
These videos dissect movies to discuss economic issues. The latest
video that they uploaded was a discussion of The
Hudsucker Proxy where they
talked about competition and the minimum wage. The link to that video
can be found here.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Today's quote of the day comes from The Korea Times. The article, “Rape-charged US Uber driver brings chills to Korean market” mentions that an Uber driver based in the United States, who had been held in custody without bail since December on charges of rape, was acquitted. He was acquitted because his lawyers were able to come up with evidence that cleared him of all charges and showed that the woman had filed a false report.

Here are the ways that the Korea Times could have reacted.

Relief that an innocent man had been set free.

Anger than an innocent man had been detained for months for a crime that he did not commit.

Questioned whether the reasons the man could have been held for so long was the fact that he was black and an immigrant.

However, here is the reaction that the Korea Times journalist, Ko Dong-hwan, chose to go with:

“Despite the acquittal, the incident raised alarms on criminal motives that could have been harbored by Korean Uber drivers if the service hadn't been stopped earlier this year on the Korean Peninsula.”

Innocent until proven guilty? The immorality of “guilt by association?” Bah! Who has the time for that sort of thing? Certainly not the Korea Times!

EDIT:It was brought to my attention that the offending quote can no longer be found in the Korea Times article. In fact, even the article's title has been changed to the much more neutral “US Uber driver acquitted of rape charges.”However, the article still does have the odd disconnect as the article changes mid-way when it stops mentioning the case at hand completely and then repeat the Korean government's position that “it will not tolerate startups operating in Korea that violate domestic laws, no matter how innovative and creative they may be.”Perhaps someone at the Korea Times reads this blog? Well, that might be too much to hope for.Regardless of the reason, I am glad to see that such a ludicrous statement was removed. Also, in the future, I shall remember to take screen shots.

(I
am already
familiar with Sue Mi Terry's mad views and now that I have
familiarized myself somewhat with Christine Ahn's views, if these two
ever decide to escalate their war of words into a bare-knuckle
fistfight, I sincerely hope that they both end up losing.)

I
am not entirely sure if Ahn is a North Korea-sympathizer. However,
she is certainly very deluded. In fact, I think that she could even
give Felix
Abt and Michael
Bassett a run for their money.

If
you ever decide to endanger your child's life just to make a
political point, you are deluded.

If
you are crying for the North Koreans who have to endure the effects
of economic sanctions, but you are not blaming yourself for having
put your daughter in harm's way in the first place, despite being
told by everyone not to do so, you are deluded.

If
you think the reason the North Koreans spend so much of their GDP on
their tinpot military is simply because of American airstrikes that
occurred in the the early 1950s, and not because of, say, choosing to pursue unusable
nuclear weapons, you are deluded.

As
for this video clip from CNN, she emphatically denies that she is
pro-North Korean. Despite her obvious delusions, I believe her. I
believe that she believes that she does not support North Korea. What I
want to focus on is what she did say. She says that she is “pro-peace,
pro-engagement, pro-dialog, and pro-human rights.”

The fact is that these
are cheap talking points – the type that is typically used when
people are trying to say as much as possible without actually having
to say anything.

And
who isn't pro-human rights? Even
the North Koreans claim to value human rights, which should
probably go down as one of the most twisted jokes to ever be recorded
in history. Much has already been said about North Korea's human
rights. However, only one question needs to be asked to end the
debate once and for all – Why doesn't the North Korean leadership
permit the vast majority of its citizens to leave?

However,
Ahn wishes to speak of peace. She wishes that the Korean War would finally end so
that both countries will divert their monies away from their
respective militaries. Never mind the fact that one is clearly the
aggressor and the other is not.

I
never could understand this mentality – the refusal to judge an
aggressor as an aggressor. I have always thought that a refusal to
make moral judgments when faced with such a decision is an abdication
of one's own mind. I could never live with myself if I did that. Apparently some people have no problems doing so.

With
mad Sue Mi Terry on one side and deluded Christine
Ahn on the other, all I can say is “A
plague o' both your houses!”

I said that I did not think that Christine Ahn was a North Korea-sympathizer and merely thought that she was deluded. However, I have just read Joshua Stanton's latest post about Christine Ahn and I stand corrected. She is not merely deluded; she IS a North Korea-sympathizer.

I also said that if Sue Mi Terry and Christine Ahn ever decide to get into a bare-knuckle fistfight, I hope that they both end up losing. I would like to retract that statement. I hope that Sue Mi Terry would win that fight, but just barely.

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About Me

My name is John Lee and I am currently the editor and writer behind the independently-run blog, “The Korean Foreigner.”

Recently, I have also begun to work as a freelance copy editor for Freedom Factory. Here, with permission from Freedom Factory, I shall post English translations of Freedom Factory’s weekly newsletter “Freedom Voice.”